Recently, substantial attention has been directed to the field of digital cable television systems, the Internet, and to methods of promoting and utilizing various types of advertising and programming content provided on such systems.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,855,008, issued to Goldhaber et al. on Dec. 29, 1998, describes an approach for distributing advertising and other information over a computer network, such as the Internet. The Goldhaber, et al. '008 patent defines “attention brokerage” as the business of buying and selling the “attention” of consumers, and states that attention brokerage can be used to provide direct, immediate payment to a consumer for paying attention to an advertisement or other information. The patent further states that the compensation may be used directly or indirectly to compensate the owners of content or may be used for other purposes, and that a link between an advertisement and a selected viewer group may be provided by reference to a database of digitally-stored demographic profiles of potential users. The Goldhaber, et al. '008 patent also states that certain advertisements may be viewed as “negatively priced” information because consumers are paid for their attention to the information, and that a special icon or other symbol displayed on a computer screen may represent compensation and allow users to choose whether they will view an ad or other information and receive the associated compensation.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,794,210, issued to Goldhaber, et al. on Aug. 11, 1998, also is directed to various categories of attention brokerage using the Internet.
Like the Goldhaber, et al. patents, U.S. Pat. No. 5,781,894, issued to Petrecca, et al. on Jul. 14, 1998, describes various systems and methods for advertising on personal computers. The described system allows a user to choose to activate an advertising system in return for receiving some type of compensation.
Turning now more toward the realm of television advertising, U.S. Pat. No. 5,532,732, issued to Yuen, et al. on Jul. 2, 1996, describes an apparatus and method for using compressed codes to monitor television program viewing. The patent describes how an audience monitoring system may determine whether a television is turned on, and how the system may monitor channel selections and the times at which the selections were made. Data descriptive of the channel selections and the times of those selections is then downloaded, for example over a telephone line, to a central database.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,907,322, issued to Kelly et al. on May 25, 1999, describes a television event marking system. The described system stores one or more broadcast event-identifiers within an activity table and, thereafter, processes the stored event-identifier data with a database of TV schedules, events, and company information to identify one or more Internet websites that may be of interest to a viewer. Hotlinks to those website addresses are then provided to the viewer via the system or a personal computer.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,500,681, issued to Jones on Mar. 19, 1996, describes an apparatus and method for generating product coupons in response to televised offers. As described in the Jones '681 patent, coupon information is stored in a memory at a cable television station, and the cable television station transmits multiple video signals, each representing a different source of television programming, over multiple television channels on a cable network. A video signal may, at times, such as during a product advertisement or other offer, include an embedded coupon identifier. A coupon subsystem at the cable television station monitors each video signal and retrieves token information from a database when it detects a corresponding embedded token identifier. The coupon information is transmitted over a data channel on the cable network, and a subscriber unit at the television viewer's site receives the data channel and extracts the coupon information. The television programming audibly or visually alerts the viewer that the coupon may be generated, and if the viewer actuates an input device, such as a button on a television remote control unit, a printer generates a coupon bearing the coupon information.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,287,181, issued to Holman on Feb. 15, 1994, describes an electronic coupon generating system. Within the system, a decoder includes a display driver for displaying indicia on a television monitor screen responsive to coupon-related data that is encoded in a television signal transmission. Upon observing the indicia on the television monitor screen, the user can manually and selectively extract coupon-related data from the television signal transmission. The extracted coupon-related data may be stored on a recording medium such as a magnetically striped card or, alternatively, may be used to generate a coupon at the location of the television viewer.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,128,752, issued to Von Kohorn on Jul. 7, 1992, is directed to systems and methods for generating coupons or tokens within the home of a television viewer. The described system includes broadcastings at a central location for transmitting electronic program signals that have product information and token redemption information embedded therein. Token generating units are provided at various member locations and provide users with the ability to generate coupons or tokens at those locations.
While the foregoing patents describe numerous methodologies for providing advertising and/or coupon information to selected individuals or demographic groups via a cable television network or the Internet, the described systems suffer from several disadvantages. First, many of the systems require that current programming content provided to a viewer on a television screen or computer monitor be interrupted while advertising or other promotional content is provided on the screen or monitor. This, tends to irritate television viewers and computer users and, therefore, reduces the effectiveness of any advertising or promotional content that has been provided. Similarly, the systems-described above do not allow for advertising or promotional content to be selectively delivered to a viewer in a manner that is responsive in real time to viewer channel or content selections. Nor do the systems described above allow for the effective promotion of television viewership affinity awards programs or “watch-and-win” programs.